# MOO into C

"Adams, Charles" (cadams@msgate.litc.lockheed.com)
Wed, 24 Jul 1996 07:37:00 PDT

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    >>>>>
          Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 23:56:19 PDT
          From: bartmoss@mistral.co.uk

          The MOO language should have the syntax of:
                  a += 1;

       Ew!  Please, no.  Please do not rush to turn MOO into C.

       Keep it simple.  MOO is a great first language.  Let's not complexify
       it for little gain.
    <<<<<

    I'm ambivalent here, I can live without them.  But this reminded me of
    something else, something I'd really like to see the server correct.  The
    following:

    foo = {@foo, bar}

    in order to append something to a list has to deep copy the entire list
    structure into a new list with the new element appended.  This can cause
    some significant overhead with large lists.  I understand that with certain
    optimizations, this wouldn't be necessary.  A byte-code optimizer would be
    fabulous, and could speed up the server tremendously.

    The only downside is that optimized code wouldn't decompile back into MOO
    source code.  This could be worked around by giving programmers some
    facility to save the un-optimized bytecodes (perhaps as a binary string?)
    before optimizing.